The conservation management of patchily-distributed species is likely to be more effective bytaking a metapopulation approach than by focus-ing on individual populations.
to better conserve the individual populations it makes sense that the individuals that keep those populations interconnected.
There is greater mortality ofindividuals during dispersal in poorly connectedareas than in well-connected areas
it makes all the sense in the world that better connected areas allow for better rates of survival for individuals when food shelter and mating partners are with in reach.
Conservation interventions, too, can be under-taken by a variety of actors from local to globalscales
the global scale is the hardest to change. between the difficulty coordinating or the huge cost and potential loss of profit any calls for change are mostly ignored orb fall on deaf ears.
Thefinal important point is to recognize andunderstand practices on the ground, in their his-torical context.
practices that seem abhorrent now were often practiced under complete ignorance or with complete apathy to the very damaging consequences.
In North America, the introducedzebra musselfilters prodigious amounts ofwater, and the resulting increase in water clarityfavors certain plants, including the highly inva-sive Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spica-tum). The milfoil then aids the mussel byproviding a settling surface and facilitates themovement of the mussel to new water bodieswhen fragments of the plant are inadvertentlytransported on boat propellers or in water (Sim-berloff and Von Holle 1999)
to this day in northern Vermont they have volunteers at boat launches checking milfoil and zebra clams on all water craft being launched.
However, occasionally, biological control intro-ductions of herbivorous insects have devastatednon-target native species.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in Australia with feral cats. they were originally brought to the nation as a means to control mice an other pests but soon escaped and became very damaging to the native life of Australia
One exampleis the Paakumshumwaau Biodiversity Reserve inJames Bay, Quebec, Canada (see Box 1.1Figure). In the Peruvian Andes, the centre oforigin of the potato, the Quetchua peoplemaintain a mosaic of agricultural and naturalareas as a biocultural heritage site with some1200 potato varieties, both cultivated and wild
often times the older pre-colonial way are vastly superior to inefficient and less impactful on the environment.
s con-sumer demands increased and technologiesevolved, resource development pressures grew
The BOOM behind the baby boomers, a huge new middle class is bound to consume more than a depression stricken 1930s America.
Landowners refused to discuss theirendangered-species issues with the US Fish andWildlife Service because they knew the agencycould only say“no,”
The original ESA was an obstacle in life to land owners, once this was realized the ESA changed to honor the rights of property owners
A third consideration is whether to extend pro-tection to all types of endangered organisms or tolimit such efforts to particular groups
this protection needs to be more effective that it is right now if we could ever justify expanding it
Differences in the amount of biodiversity that isretained in different agroforestry systems canoften be explained by differences in the intensityof past and present management
the amount of bio diversity is bound to fall when the managers of a forest system are more concerned with their potential profits that biodiversity.
partially modified land-scapes are an important and valuable asset forbiodiversity conservation, and should not beoverlooked by biologists and conservationists,and abandoned to yet further levels of intensifi-cation
just because a land scape has been modified that does not mean that the value is gone, reduced maybe depending of the degree of modification
urrent explosive growth in markets for carbonas mechanisms for climate change mitigation willlikely make the restoration of forest landscapesincreasingly viable in the near future
Once we look at forests at tools, in this case to reduce carbon we can suddenly justify large scale restoration of forest landscapes.
Entire funding mechanisms have beenestablished to reflect global prioritization, such asthe US$150 million Critical Ecosystem PartnershipFund (www.cepf.net) and the US$100 million Glob-al Conservation Fund
Its surprising the amount of money NGOs work with. Its rare to see a Government make anything close to as large of a commitment to conservation as these groups
Island effectsLikely it is that islands—real ones surroundedby water and“montane”islands of high elevationhabitat surrounded by lowlands—provide theisolation needed for species formation
I am under the assumption that the biodiversity and genetic uniqueness of Australia is in part due to the the Island effect .
The long geographical isolation of South Americathat ended roughly 3 million years ago allowedsuboscine passerines to move into North Americaacross the newly formed Isthmus of Panama.
there can be parallels drawn between the end of South America isolation 3 million years ago and the Colombian exchange. the key difference being that this event 3 million years ago was entirely natural compared to the man made effects of the Colombian exchange
The satellite record has been extraordinarilyuseful in understandingfire activity in highlyfire prone environment
I did a project last semester using GIS and NVDI or Normalized Vegetation Different Index to map the vegetation recovery in southern California after the Camp fire.
Eucalypts are renowned for their extraordinarilyprolific vegetative recovery of burnt trunks viaepicormic buds
The eucalypts tree is one of a number of species that are currently growing back after the Australian Bush fires this year.
. Coral reefs around theglobe are threatened (Pandolfiet al.2003). It ishard to envision a reasonable future for tropicalcoral reefs and the diversity of marine life theysupport.
Coral reefs support a huge amount of biodiversity and already showing signs of decline across the globe
The last time the Earth was two degrees Centi-grade warmer, sea level was four to six metershigher.
often time people do no realize that warming by only a few degrees can cause drastic sea level change.
Overall,fish provides more than2.8 billion people with ~20% or more of theiraverage per capita intake of animal protein.
This just shows the importance of quickly developing sustainable aquaculture in the near future.
while people prefer to hunt large-bodied mammals in tropical forests, feedingtaboos and restrictions can switch“on or off”depending on levels of game depletion
its know that food scarcity will cause people to defer from what is considered taboo, historically is not unique to find humans resorting to foraging for foods that would not be considered traditional, such as roots, bark, and companion animals.
The popularity of large‐scale frontier‐colonization programs has also waned.If such trends continue, they could beginto alleviate some pressures on forestsfrom small‐scale farming, hunting, andfuel‐wood gathering
smaller scale harvesting for the self sufficiency of local populations would be hugely beneficial to both the ecosystem was well as the locals who would be more financially independent.
Mangrove forests, salt-tolerant ecosystems thatgrow in tropical and subtropical intertidal zones,have also been seriously reduced
the reduction of Mangrove forests will lead to more damage to once protected shoreline ecosystems during weather events.
https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/oceans_practice/coasts/mangroves/mangrove_importance/?
farming can result in the loss of half the soilnutrients in less than a decade (Bolin and Cook1983), a loss that can take centuries to restore.
The rate of nutrients being lost can be slowed with some responsible farming practices. Certain types of legumes can restore nitrogen back to the soil prolonging the drain on fields.
https://www.farmprogress.com/cover-crops/nitrogen-cycling-and-cover-crops
Without thisgreenhouse effect, humans and most other organ-isms would be unable to survive, as the globalmean surface temperature would drop from thecurrent 14Cto–19C (IPCC 2007). Ironically,the ever-rising consumption of fossil fuels duringthe industrial age and the resultant increasingemission of greenhouse gases have created theopposite problem, leading to an increase in themagnitude of the greenhouse effect and a conse-quent rise in global temperatures
Without the Greenhouse effect earth would be similar to mars in that the atmospheric would not hold in heat from the sun as it does now creating a much much colder global average tempature.
Just as biodiversity has varied markedly throughtime, so it also varies across space. Indeed, onecan think of it as forming a richly textured landand seascape, with peaks (hotspots) and troughs(coldspots), and extensive plains in between
life in a very harsh environment like those found in expansive desserts or in the cold of Antarctica is much more likely to be less diverse than like that found at say an off shore tropical reef
The frequency distribution of the numbers oftime periods with different levels of extinction ismarkedly right-skewed
overtime more species evolve into existence resulting in more genetic diversity with the exception of major extinction events.